I Think We Need a “Check-In Day”

I’ve been thinking more and more about Hannah’s comments on my post last week about the impact and significance of connecting with others in the diabetes community through our various platforms of choice and I want to try something. I’m a firm believer that comments make the world go ’round, as far as blogging is concerned. Yes, there are stat counters and analytics reports you can run, but pageviews and unique visitors don’t mean much to me when it comes to sharing personal stories and experiences. What matters to me is when someone reads something I write, and then takes the time to leave a comment.

Sometimes it’s feedback. Sometimes it’s a high five. Sometimes it’s a pickmeup. Sure, there’s a weird satisfaction in knowing that someone found value from something I share on a silly diabetes blog, but I think there’s something else going on. I think comments can be a positive reinforcement that you’re on the right path. I share, you comment, it encourages me to share (more? again? I couldn’t decide on the right word). You share, I comment, it encourages you to share.

It’s the circle of life?

So here’s what I’m proposing:

Next Monday, July 22nd (2013), I want everyone to comment on every blog post you read. I know a lot of you always have something to add to blog posts (Mr. Scott K. Johnson comes to mind), and that’s awesome. You all keep handling your business.

For the lurkers, or for anyone who truly doesn’t have any feedback or comments (which, by the way, is totally okay), a generic phrase can work. I’m nominating “Check!”, with the exclamation mark as the “Hey, I read this. Have a nice day” response for everyone else to use.

Because anonymity is still a thing that needs to be respected, I’m going to allow anonymous comments that day. Normally I request a name and email address so I can verify you are a human, and if necessary directly respond to feedback or questions, but since I moderate my comments there’s still a minimal chance of a robot passing through my setup.

To review: Monday, July 22. Everyone comment on everything you read. It can be a full-on sentence with a subject and predicate, or it can be a simple “Check!” to indicate you read the post. Blog admins are encouraged to enable anonymous comments for the day, because lurkers that wish to remain anonymous are simply readers with a grayed out question mark for an avatar (and they are people too). Please tag your posts with #dblogcheck so we can find your posts.

I think this could work. But only if everyone else is interested. So what say you?

[Update 20:06] After receiving some feedback, I’d like to add a few additional thoughts and parameters to the gathering.

In an effort to better accommodate lurkers and readers more comfortable with social media platforms besides blogs, comments are welcome along any channel: Facebook comments, Twitter mentions (or direct messages), reblogs, +1’s, and so on and so forth. The idea is for the community to grow through mutual awareness. By realizing the impact and reach of our content. I’m sure we all know that the diabetes community is more than the active 1%, this is just a way to shine some light on the remaining 99%.

And for some reason I never thought to give this thing a hashtag. Since they can be followed on both Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to keep track of everything I’m suggesting the hashtag #dblogcheck. I’ll do what I can to curate and share everything I see next week, but if the hashtag circulates it’ll make all of your great content easier to find.

I’m in. That is, if I remember! (Hey, I’m an old lady!) But I think I will do the same thing with my blog, which I don’t write very often, but do know that people read. We can be a big, interconnected world of people with D!

I think that since I started using RSS readers (first Google Reader, and now Feedly), it has made it so that you just jump from post to post. You have to make the extra effort to go to the actual blog to make a comment. Excellent idea to have everyone take the time to let people know you are reading what they are writing.

Chris, what a great idea. I only learned about this late on Monday. So I’m going to pretend it’s #dblogcheck week. There’s far too many great DOC blogs to cover in a single day — or week for that matter. This is what I love about the DOC, new ideas popup that help strengthen and expand it for all of us.
Happy (late) #dblogcheck day.